Talk:Nikola Tesla

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Nikola Tesla article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12: 30 days

Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments and look in the archives before commenting.

Serbian, Croatian, American? Read this first.

If you have come here to object to the description of Tesla as "Serbian-American", or his birthplace or nationality in this article, your comment will be removed without reply.

All inquiries and discussion related to Tesla's nationality and ethnicity are limited to the subpage Talk:Nikola Tesla/Nationality and ethnicity per local community consensus. If you have recently made such a comment and noticed that it has disappeared from this page, check that subpage and its archives.

Before posting on either page, please familiarise yourself with using reliable sources, maintaining a neutral point of view, and ensuring verifiability.

The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article relates to the Balkans or Eastern Europe, a contentious topic.

Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator.

Nikola Tesla has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 3, 2004	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
July 14, 2005	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
September 4, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
January 9, 2007	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
July 6, 2008	Good article reassessment	Delisted
November 7, 2010	Peer review	Reviewed
February 12, 2017	Good article nominee	Listed
A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on July 10, 2017.
Current status: Good article

Physics: Biographies / History Top‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Biographies Taskforce.
	This article is supported by History Taskforce.

Electrical engineering Top‑importance

	Engineering portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Electrical engineering, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Electrical engineering on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Electrical engineeringWikipedia:WikiProject Electrical engineeringTemplate:WikiProject Electrical engineeringelectrical engineering
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

History Top‑importance

	History portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Biography: Science and Academia / Core

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as Top-importance).
	This article is listed on the project's core biographies page.

Serbia: Belgrade Top‑importance

	Serbia portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Serbia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Serbia on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SerbiaWikipedia:WikiProject SerbiaTemplate:WikiProject SerbiaSerbia
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Belgrade task force (marked as High-importance).

Radio High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Radio, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Radio-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.RadioWikipedia:WikiProject RadioTemplate:WikiProject RadioRadio

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

To-do List:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Create: Missing years and articles in radio, National Association of Radio Distress-Signalling and Infocommunications (Hungary)
Assess : Unassessed Radio articles; Unknown-importance Radio articles
Cleanup : Radio articles needing attention
Expand : Midweek Politics Bob Crane
Maintain : Portal:Radio
Stubs : Expand: Radio stubs
Verify : Unreferenced BLPs
Other : Collaboration of the Week:
Requests for Radio peer review:

Austria Mid‑importance

	Austria portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Austria, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles about Austria on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project.AustriaWikipedia:WikiProject AustriaTemplate:WikiProject AustriaAustria
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Yugoslavia High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Yugoslavia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Yugoslavia on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.YugoslaviaWikipedia:WikiProject YugoslaviaTemplate:WikiProject YugoslaviaYugoslavia
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Croatia High‑importance

	Croatia portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Croatia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Croatia on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CroatiaWikipedia:WikiProject CroatiaTemplate:WikiProject CroatiaCroatia
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

New York City Mid‑importance

	New York City portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject New York City, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of New York City-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.New York CityWikipedia:WikiProject New York CityTemplate:WikiProject New York CityNew York City
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Skepticism Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Skepticism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science, pseudoscience, pseudohistory and skepticism related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SkepticismWikipedia:WikiProject SkepticismTemplate:WikiProject SkepticismSkepticism
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

History of Science Top‑importance

	History of science portal This article is part of the History of Science WikiProject, an attempt to improve and organize the history of science content on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. You can also help with the History of Science Collaboration of the Month.History of ScienceWikipedia:WikiProject History of ScienceTemplate:WikiProject History of Sciencehistory of science
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Energy Top‑importance

	Energy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Energy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Energy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EnergyWikipedia:WikiProject EnergyTemplate:WikiProject Energyenergy
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Robotics Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Robotics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Robotics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.RoboticsWikipedia:WikiProject RoboticsTemplate:WikiProject RoboticsRobotics
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Veganism and Vegetarianism High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Veganism and Vegetarianism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of veganism and vegetarianism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Veganism and VegetarianismWikipedia:WikiProject Veganism and VegetarianismTemplate:WikiProject Veganism and VegetarianismVeganism and Vegetarianism
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Spoken Wikipedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles that are spoken on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Spoken WikipediaWikipedia:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaTemplate:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaSpoken Wikipedia

Philosophy: Philosophers / Social and political / Contemporary Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	Philosophers
	Social and political philosophy
	Contemporary philosophy

Other talk page banners

The contents of Biography of Nikola Tesla was merged into Nikola Tesla on June 2005. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

There is a request, submitted by Lionsdude148, for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.

The rationale behind the request is: "Important".

Section sizes

Section size for Nikola Tesla (45 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	6,347	6,347
Early years	9,654	10,453
Working at Budapest Telephone Exchange	799	799
Working at Edison	1,226	6,824
Moving to the United States	5,598	5,598
Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing	2,393	2,393
AC and the induction motor	6,936	10,467
Market turmoil	3,531	3,531
New York laboratories	1,815	24,545
Tesla coil	2,348	2,348
Citizenship	1,055	1,055
Wireless lighting	3,177	3,177
Polyphase system and the Columbian Exposition	5,857	5,857
Steam-powered oscillating generator	1,009	1,009
Consulting on Niagara	1,078	1,078
The Nikola Tesla Company	683	683
Lab fire	1,100	1,100
X-ray experimentation	4,735	4,735
Radio remote control	1,688	1,688
Wireless power	3,513	14,528
Colorado Springs	6,329	6,329
Wardenclyffe	4,686	4,686
Later years	822	25,950
Bladeless turbine	1,041	1,041
Wireless lawsuits	3,519	3,519
Nobel Prize rumors	1,973	1,973
Other awards, patents and ideas	7,828	7,828
Living circumstances	3,396	3,396
Birthday press conferences	7,371	7,371
Death	3,387	3,387
Personal life and character	9,853	9,853
Views and beliefs	98	7,809
On experimental and theoretical physics	3,476	3,476
On society	3,207	3,207
On religion	1,028	1,028
Literary works	2,585	2,585
Legacy and honors	2,657	2,657
See also	183	183
Notes	71	71
References	6,237	6,237
Further reading	56	8,038
Books	1,804	1,804
Publications	2,942	2,942
Journals	3,236	3,236
External links	3,505	3,505
Total	145,832	145,832

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (center, color, defense, realize, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Contradicting information

How can "Tesla first studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree", while later "He finished a four-year term in three years, graduating in 1873" is stated? 2001:1C06:1B06:1A00:3071:CADF:36B6:FADF (talk) 23:27, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 24 May 2025

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change "Arcturus" to "Antares", as the source listed calls the star "Antarus" WindowsXPenjoyer (talk) 01:40, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Chetvorno^TALK 03:57, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Article review

I took a look at this article last year, and saw lots of progress was made since then. Below are some concerns that still remain in the article:

There's uncited statements in the article, including entire paragraphs. If editors want, I can add citation needed templates to these locations.
I removed lower-quality or duplicate sources from the "Further reading" and "External links" sections. I think there are additional sources listed that could either be used in the article or removed.
The article relies a lot on block quotes. Considering the vast amount of material about this person, I think summary style would be more appropriate.
"New York laboratories" suffers from MOS:OVERSECTION, with one paragraph sections. This should be formatted more effectively.
In general, this article seems a little disorganised. This is probably because many editors have added prose over the years but no one has gone through the entire article to ensure it is coherant. Is anyone willing to do this?

If editors are willing to help, I think this article could become a featured article. I would do it myself, but I am not a subject-matter expert. Z1720 (talk) 14:44, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good cleanup. I participated in the GA and it was a major cleanup from its previous state. The choppiness in the "New York laboratories" is a vestige from how the article used to be more of a "list of Tesla inventions". Improving the summary style would be an improvement. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 17:26, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]